For Mma Makutsi, it was a blow on more than one level. It was bad enough hearing of Violet’s shortlisting, but what made it particularly hard to bear was the fact that it was on her page, right underneath her photograph. It spoiled everything and made it hard to imagine how she could show her article, as she had planned to do, to her friends.

Fanwell sensed the problem. “Cut the other article out,” he said. “That way you won’t have to look at it.”

Mma Makutsi approved of this suggestion, and reached for the scissors she kept in her top drawer. As she did so, the telephone rang, and she looked at it with annoyance. Abandoning her task, she picked up the receiver and answered, her irritation showing in her tone of voice. But that soon changed: it was Rosie—the first of the three Rosies who were to call the agency over the next hour.

—

THEIR PROGRESS WAS SLOW. As they drove down the roads that divided the Village into its fenced plots, scrutinising each for possible investigation, Mma Ramotswe realised just how much must have changed over the past few decades. Older houses were still there—shady bungalows tucked away among now well-established growths of shrubs and trees—but in many cases the generous yards that had surrounded these houses had been sub-divided, and newer houses been erected cheek by jowl with the older. The process had been a discreet one, like that of a river moving stones and mud banks, placing one here and one there, and then, with the next high water, moving a larger rock to rest among the smaller ones. You would not notice this going on if you saw it every day, but, after a while, the shape of things could be quite different from what it had been when you first walked by. That, thought Mma Ramotswe, was why Susan had been unable to find the place where she had lived. The house might still be there, exactly where it had been all those years ago, but the things around it could all be these new things, shifted about by the river of human activity.

Charlie was impatient. “Maybe around this corner, Mma,” he said. “There are some old houses there. I have been past that way—I remember them.”

She had explained to him about the patience required for investigative work, but she was not sure that he had understood.

“You know what a painting is like, Charlie? You look at a painting and you see there are many strokes of the brush—tiny strokes. These little things make up the whole picture, but you need every one of those little strokes.”

He had looked at her blankly, and she realised that he might never have looked at a picture. He saw photographs, of course—he understood those, but had he ever looked at a picture that some human hand had painstakingly painted?